What was the mortician thinking?
Too lazy to hammer the final coffin-nail
that common sense bellowed
then begged weepily to have driven home
like an irrefutable truth.

And wouldn’t you know? The other nails
soon pry loose too, one by one,
as if of their own accord
and the wounded coffin lid fails to restrain
a familiar, pale paw caked with icy crud

from slithering out like a tendril,
feeling about to grasp the unsuspecting hand
of a hireling pallbearer
helping to bear the bier
to the supposed final resting place.

And how predictable! Pallbearers recoil
in horror at the clamminess of flailing palms
and at Maynard’s self-pitying sniveling,
dragged back to life by desire for touch.
Pallbearers flee ungently into that evil night.
*
For Justin Hakanson